10 ms·

Women and Mathematics

17 points by pchristensen 18y ago

glymor 18y ago
This is crap. 5 paragraphs of how mathematics has higher standards of rigour. Completed by a muddled argument supported only by a quote and apocryphal reports. Also, "snow" falling over text makes it hard to read, as would be obvious.
quoderat 18y ago
Women are socially (and, perhaps, otherwise) conditioned to avoid those society perceives as loser-types. Unfortunately, mathematicians still fit this mold, as much as I wish it weren't so. This alone largely explains the absence of women in math, much as it explains the absence of women in my field, IT.
- reh297 18y ago
  Having been a woman for most of my life (and a girl for the rest of it), I can assure you that women don't avoid fields applying mathematics just because they don't want to hang out with loser-types. In fact, I find most women try to pursue things they enjoy, more so than avoid things they may hate (like losers, or long division, per se). If there's a lack of women in IT, it's probably because they don't enjoy it, or aren't encouraged to pursue it. Most women don't make professional decisions hoping to increase their chances of havin' a cutie in the next cubicle.
  - gaius 18y ago
    That is true of most adults (of both sexes) however most people (here in the UK at least) choose the general direction of their careers at the age of 14, which is when you choose your GCSEs. You get to tweak it again at 16 when you choose your A-levels (from a subset of your GCSEs) and again at 18 when you choose your first degree, but the decisions made at 14 are so far upstream at this point that you only have so much maneuverability left. Anyway, at 14, I remember that my double-science class was almost entirely male, perhaps 5/25 girls (about 100 people in my year in total). Drama and English had the opposite ratio. Only those 5 girls would even have had the option to take a science or engineering degree, 10% of the females in the year. Now we all know you don't need one of those to work in IT, but still, if you want girls in the field, that's where you've got to catch them.
    - aswanson 18y ago
      Maybe they don't want to be caught, as Greenspun spelled out. The women with the ability seem to have a better life perspective than the men, on average. They prove their better understanding of mathematics by working out the bayesian priors and adjust career goals accordingly.
  - quoderat 18y ago
    "Most women don't make professional decisions hoping to increase their chances of havin' a cutie in the next cubicle." Not consciously, anyway. And it doesn't have anything to do with "havin' a cutie," it's more to avoid going into fields with a social stigma associated with them and their typical practitioners. This social stigma is decreasing (even in IT -- "geek" is no longer an insult), but nevertheless it is still there. For whatever reason, women seem to be more influenced by social cues -- or perhaps just influenced differently than men. It's not wrong -- it just is. Therefore, my guess is that a lot of the gender disparity is still extant for social stigma reasons and the concomitant avoidance of that stigma.
    - DaniFong 18y ago
      I think the social stigma argument is oversimplified. Nerds often just trade the standard status hierarchy for another, governed by more nerdly pursuits. Yet positive nerd social spaces and stereotypes for boys are much more accessible than those for girls.
dilanj 18y ago
48% of the class of '06 at MIT were female (up from like 2% back in the day) and most of them were serious hackers. Yet today almost all of the girls who didn’t go to grad school are working for either a large corporation or an investment bank. With the whole goddamn responsibility of keeping humanity alive on top of them undoubtedly there’s a genetic disposition for women to be more risk averse. Math and programming are relatively precarious. That though probably is easily overcome, since women have clearly been extremely competent in pretty much every other field now for decades. So the problem has to lie in social conditioning. Cultural expectation and etiquette has always been the most powerful destroyer of potential in both men and women. Tradition is THE enemy. (Heard this joke? Why do baby boys wear blue and baby girls wear pink? Because they don’t have a fucking choice.)
- antipc 18y ago
  Hi, you appear to be brainwashed by the PC establishment. Try this experiment: attempt to think for yourself for a few months. (Try out the craziest thoughts! If they're 'scandalous' you don't have to run them by other people, just evaluate them for yourself.) Also, think critically about the people who promote these views. Most of them aren't very smart (in the sense that a tenured professor with awards can still be an idiot), or have a vested interest in promoting these views (typically racial). Here's the first Google hit I could find disproving your joke. Someone else can find a blog post where a lesbian buys her daughter a firetruck and the girl begins to nurse the firetruck. The world evolves in a certain way for a reason. Do you think this is the first era in which people thought that everyone might be equal? This is the first era in which we've had the luxury to attempt the experiment. The results are in: people aren't equal. Pack it up and go home. We're all tired of hearing this drivel. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/boys-like-blue-girls-like-pink--its-in-our-genes-462390.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/boys-like-blue-gir...
  - DaniFong 18y ago
    I don't think dilanj is suggesting that no biologically driven differences exist. I think that the argument is that at MIT there's a preselected, science focused group of women, who have their professional involvement with math decrease dramatically as they enter the working world and need to support themselves. There's a strong, though not certain case for a cultural effect here. And by the way, on color? "In Western culture, the practice of assigning pink to an individual gender began in the 1920s. From then until the 1940s, pink was considered appropriate for boys because it was the more masculine and decided color while blue was considered appropriate for girls because it was the more delicate and dainty color. Since the 1940s, the societal norm apparently inverted so that pink became appropriate for girls and blue appropriate for boys, a practice that has continued into the 21st century" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink
schtog 18y ago
Is it raining pixels on that site? I see white pixels moving from top to bottom of the site...
- Prrometheus 18y ago
  I don't have the best eyesight in the world, my whole family basically consists of mole people, so that site freaked me out. I thought something was going wrong with me.
russell 18y ago
I would suggest that girls form study groups. My daughter and 4 of her girl friends formed one in her senior year in high school for English, Calculus, Physics, etc. My daughter got a lot from it. Two of the girls were valedictorians; all went to top schools. It succeeded because they were motivated to get into good schools and the the simple model probably doesn't scale. School sponsored pairings in science didn't work so well because personality problems and differences in dedication. Has anyone had experience (or their kids) with online study groups, particularly with collaborative aids?
- jimbokun 18y ago
  Why did you choose to phrase that "I would suggest that girls form study groups" and not "I would suggest that all students form study groups?" Just because you have a daughter? Because the topic of the article is about women and mathematics? Or because there is something about study groups that especially helps girls, but not boys?
  - russell 18y ago
    The topic was women and mathematics, but I phrased it that way because of the sexual dynamics of mixed groups of teenagers. Because boys tend to be more skilled at math, they will show off and the girls will tend to become more passive. The boys' competitiveness will dominate. Of course, study groups for boys are a good thing too.

17 points by pchristensen 18y ago

This is crap. 5 paragraphs of how mathematics has higher standards of rigour. Completed by a muddled argument supported only by a quote and apocryphal reports. Also, "snow" falling over text makes it hard to read, as would be obvious.

quoderat 18y ago

Women are socially (and, perhaps, otherwise) conditioned to avoid those society perceives as loser-types. Unfortunately, mathematicians still fit this mold, as much as I wish it weren't so. This alone largely explains the absence of women in math, much as it explains the absence of women in my field, IT.

reh297 18y ago
Having been a woman for most of my life (and a girl for the rest of it), I can assure you that women don't avoid fields applying mathematics just because they don't want to hang out with loser-types. In fact, I find most women try to pursue things they enjoy, more so than avoid things they may hate (like losers, or long division, per se). If there's a lack of women in IT, it's probably because they don't enjoy it, or aren't encouraged to pursue it. Most women don't make professional decisions hoping to increase their chances of havin' a cutie in the next cubicle.
- gaius 18y ago
  That is true of most adults (of both sexes) however most people (here in the UK at least) choose the general direction of their careers at the age of 14, which is when you choose your GCSEs. You get to tweak it again at 16 when you choose your A-levels (from a subset of your GCSEs) and again at 18 when you choose your first degree, but the decisions made at 14 are so far upstream at this point that you only have so much maneuverability left. Anyway, at 14, I remember that my double-science class was almost entirely male, perhaps 5/25 girls (about 100 people in my year in total). Drama and English had the opposite ratio. Only those 5 girls would even have had the option to take a science or engineering degree, 10% of the females in the year. Now we all know you don't need one of those to work in IT, but still, if you want girls in the field, that's where you've got to catch them.
  - aswanson 18y ago
    Maybe they don't want to be caught, as Greenspun spelled out. The women with the ability seem to have a better life perspective than the men, on average. They prove their better understanding of mathematics by working out the bayesian priors and adjust career goals accordingly.
- quoderat 18y ago
  "Most women don't make professional decisions hoping to increase their chances of havin' a cutie in the next cubicle." Not consciously, anyway. And it doesn't have anything to do with "havin' a cutie," it's more to avoid going into fields with a social stigma associated with them and their typical practitioners. This social stigma is decreasing (even in IT -- "geek" is no longer an insult), but nevertheless it is still there. For whatever reason, women seem to be more influenced by social cues -- or perhaps just influenced differently than men. It's not wrong -- it just is. Therefore, my guess is that a lot of the gender disparity is still extant for social stigma reasons and the concomitant avoidance of that stigma.
  - DaniFong 18y ago
    I think the social stigma argument is oversimplified. Nerds often just trade the standard status hierarchy for another, governed by more nerdly pursuits. Yet positive nerd social spaces and stereotypes for boys are much more accessible than those for girls.

dilanj 18y ago

48% of the class of '06 at MIT were female (up from like 2% back in the day) and most of them were serious hackers. Yet today almost all of the girls who didn’t go to grad school are working for either a large corporation or an investment bank. With the whole goddamn responsibility of keeping humanity alive on top of them undoubtedly there’s a genetic disposition for women to be more risk averse. Math and programming are relatively precarious. That though probably is easily overcome, since women have clearly been extremely competent in pretty much every other field now for decades. So the problem has to lie in social conditioning. Cultural expectation and etiquette has always been the most powerful destroyer of potential in both men and women. Tradition is THE enemy. (Heard this joke? Why do baby boys wear blue and baby girls wear pink? Because they don’t have a fucking choice.)

antipc 18y ago
Hi, you appear to be brainwashed by the PC establishment. Try this experiment: attempt to think for yourself for a few months. (Try out the craziest thoughts! If they're 'scandalous' you don't have to run them by other people, just evaluate them for yourself.) Also, think critically about the people who promote these views. Most of them aren't very smart (in the sense that a tenured professor with awards can still be an idiot), or have a vested interest in promoting these views (typically racial). Here's the first Google hit I could find disproving your joke. Someone else can find a blog post where a lesbian buys her daughter a firetruck and the girl begins to nurse the firetruck. The world evolves in a certain way for a reason. Do you think this is the first era in which people thought that everyone might be equal? This is the first era in which we've had the luxury to attempt the experiment. The results are in: people aren't equal. Pack it up and go home. We're all tired of hearing this drivel. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/boys-like-blue-girls-like-pink--its-in-our-genes-462390.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/boys-like-blue-gir...
- DaniFong 18y ago
  I don't think dilanj is suggesting that no biologically driven differences exist. I think that the argument is that at MIT there's a preselected, science focused group of women, who have their professional involvement with math decrease dramatically as they enter the working world and need to support themselves. There's a strong, though not certain case for a cultural effect here. And by the way, on color? "In Western culture, the practice of assigning pink to an individual gender began in the 1920s. From then until the 1940s, pink was considered appropriate for boys because it was the more masculine and decided color while blue was considered appropriate for girls because it was the more delicate and dainty color. Since the 1940s, the societal norm apparently inverted so that pink became appropriate for girls and blue appropriate for boys, a practice that has continued into the 21st century" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink

schtog 18y ago

Is it raining pixels on that site? I see white pixels moving from top to bottom of the site...

Prrometheus 18y ago
I don't have the best eyesight in the world, my whole family basically consists of mole people, so that site freaked me out. I thought something was going wrong with me.

russell 18y ago

I would suggest that girls form study groups. My daughter and 4 of her girl friends formed one in her senior year in high school for English, Calculus, Physics, etc. My daughter got a lot from it. Two of the girls were valedictorians; all went to top schools. It succeeded because they were motivated to get into good schools and the the simple model probably doesn't scale. School sponsored pairings in science didn't work so well because personality problems and differences in dedication. Has anyone had experience (or their kids) with online study groups, particularly with collaborative aids?

jimbokun 18y ago
Why did you choose to phrase that "I would suggest that girls form study groups" and not "I would suggest that all students form study groups?" Just because you have a daughter? Because the topic of the article is about women and mathematics? Or because there is something about study groups that especially helps girls, but not boys?
- russell 18y ago
  The topic was women and mathematics, but I phrased it that way because of the sexual dynamics of mixed groups of teenagers. Because boys tend to be more skilled at math, they will show off and the girls will tend to become more passive. The boys' competitiveness will dominate. Of course, study groups for boys are a good thing too.